Ohio Breweries by Rick Armon

Jackie O's is sharing a video profiling its new production brewery in Athens. The brewery isn't open yet -- and the equipment isn't even installed. But a bearded Brad Clark, the head brewer, narrates a walk-through of the facility, located just outside of downtown. (The existing Jackie O's brewpub is downtown.)

The video is one of four that Jackie O's will share with beer fans. Part 2 will be available next week, with two more coming in September. The nearly four-minute Part 1 video, complete with background music, can be seen here:

Great Lakes Brewing Co. announced Thursday that it's moving into the Duluth, Minn., market in October. The Cleveland brewery teamed up with Bernick’s Beverages & Vending. Great Lakes already is available in St. Paul and Minneapolis. The brewery is now distributed in 13 states and Washington, D.C.

“Many breweries choose a strategy of being a mile wide and an inch deep," brewery co-owner Pat Conway said in a prepared statement. "We prefer to penetrate deeper into existing markets. Entering Duluth is an extension of that idea.”

Angels on the Avenue will host a fundraising brewery tour Oct. 6. The group, which volunteers time at the St. Augustine Health Campus, an assisted living center on Cleveland's west side, plans to donate $1,000 to the Holy Family Hospice in Parma.

The tour was set up to honor Angels on the Avenue founding member Dick Kemer who died of lung cancer in May.

Main Street Medina will hold its inaugural Medina Beer Fest from 6 to 9 p.m. Sept. 15 at Williams on the Lake. The fundraiser will feature beer from Thirsty Dog, Lagerheads, Ohio Brewing, The Brew Kettle, Fat Head’s, Hoppin’ Frog, Buckeye and Maumee.

Lagerheads, which has a brewpub north of Medina, also will serve pulled pork sandwiches. Tickets are $40, or $35 for Main Street Medina members. The cost includes four-ounce samples, a commemorative tasting glass and food.

A YouTube user who goes by the name NightShiftLimo has posted a video profiling the Listerman Brewing Co. and Triple Digit Brewing in Cincinnati. Both operate out of the Listermann homebrew shop. Check out the video here:

Lane, one of the owners of the Winking Lizard Tavern chain and the man who organizes the popular World Tour of Beers each year, will be honored Friday by the Belgian Brewers guild and the Mashstaff of the Knights in Belgium. He will be inducted into the Knights of Honor known as le Chevalerie du Fourquet des Brasseurs during a special ceremony.

Mike Malinowski of Massillon is an award-winning homebrewer. Last year, he won the Society of Akron Area Zymurgists’ annual Wizard of SAAZ homebrewing contest and had his beer brewed by The Brew Kettle in Strongsville for the Great American Beer Festival Pro-Am Competition. This year? He won the local event again and his American IPA is being made by Thirsty Dog Brewing Co. in Akron to be included in this year's GABF Pro-Am. Called Alpha Male, it also will be available at Thirsty Dog and at select area restaurants.

-- Columbus Alive has a short Q&A with Barley's Brewing brewmaster Angelo Signorino. When asked what people don't realize about being a brewer, he responded: "If I drank all day I wouldn’t be able to do my job. I wouldn’t make good beer. I taste everything at every stage in the process, but rarely do I get a glass of beer and drink it while I’m at work. After work, that’s different." To read the full Q&A, click here.

Pumpkin beers are all the seasonal rage. But not at the Indigo Imp Brewery in Cleveland. Indigo Imp opted this year to make a seasonal ale with roasted sweet potato and spices.

"We don't do anything by the book at our brewery anyway," brewer and owner Matt Chappel said, laughing when asked about the beer called Autumn. (The brewery also uses open fermentation -- an unusual process for a modern American brewery.)

Fishers Foods will hold a "Beer Tasting Festival" from 4 to 8 p.m. Aug. 31 at its grocery store in Jackson Township. The tasting will feature about 20 beers and representatives from Great Lakes, Victory, Goose Island and Leinenkugel.

The cost is 25 cents per sample. Appetizers also will be available. Growlers -- the glass jugs and not the beer -- will be on sale for $2.99.

The Best of Show runner-up was an American amber by Whit Hesser and Blake Horsburgh, who are in the process of opening the Fifty West Brewing Co. in Cincinnati. They also received a third place award in the Belgian strong ale category for a Belgian blonde. (Fifty West also was one of the event sponsors. You can check out Hesser and Horsburgh's blog Brewing with Friends by clicking here.)

-- The Columbus Dispatch has a story about the exploding craft brewery scene in the state capital. “People are fed up with the big breweries,” Fred Lee, co-founder of Actual Brewing Co., told the newspaper. “Their beers are lifeless.” To read the full story, click here.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a front-page story today about yet another brewery planned for the Ohio City neighborhood -- an area that already boasts Great Lakes Brewing, Market Garden Brewery and the soon-to-open Nano Brew Cleveland.

Boris Music, a Slovenian immigrant, plans to expand and redevelop the German specialty store Hansa Import Haus into a restaurant and brewery, the newspaper reported. The goal is to build a major brewery that would produce recipes from Slovenian brewer Pivovarna Lasko, the Plain Dealer said. To read the full story, click here.

Market Garden Brewery in Cleveland will kick off a major celebration of pumpkin beer on Wednesday, Oct. 3. The brewpub is turning over its 12 guest taps to pumpkin beers and will serve its own Franklin Castle Pumpkin Spiced Ale from a real pumpkin that's fashioned into a firkin. It also will offer several pumpkin-themed menu items.

Nano Brew Cleveland, as its name implies, is a nanobrewery in Ohio City – the same neighborhood that houses Market Garden Brewery and Great Lakes Brewing Co. The brewpub, owned by the folks who operate Market Garden, features a custom-built, 20-gallon brewing system. That’s the perfect size for experimenting – and that’s exactly what brewer Andy Tveekrem plans to do.

Don Heinrich Tolzmann was involved the new documentary The Cincinnati Beer Story and also is the author of the new book Christian Moerlein: The Man and His Brewery. He retired as curator of the German-Americana Collection and director of the German-American Studies Program at the University of Cincinnati, and is considered an expert in German-American studies.

Question: You’ve just released a new biography on Christian Moerlein. What don’t people know about the man behind one of Cincinnati’s most famous beer brands?

When Nate Cornett moved to Yellow Springs in 2006, he thought the quaint, artistic village would be an ideal spot for a craft brewery.

So perfect, in fact, that he registered a web domain name for “Yellow Springs Brewery.” Now years later, he’s getting ready to launch the brewery in the tourist town along with lead brewer Jeffrey McElfresh of Kettering. His wife, Lisa Wolters, a ceramic artist, is also part of the venture.

The Wooden Shoe Brewing Co. in Minster has ceased operations. Co-owner Andy Phlipot confirmed today that the brewery shut down this summer because of a "partnership failure." He declined to comment further on the reason.

"It sucks," he said. "It really does." He called the closure heart-breaking, especially because the Wooden Shoe brand means so much to the Phlipot family.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper has a story about MillerCoors reaping financial benefits from its craft beer division, Tenth and Blake Beer Co. That division oversees Leinenkugel, Blue Moon and imported brands.

Tenth and Blake accounts for less than 10 percent of MillerCoors' sales volume, but represents a larger, unspecified portion of MillerCoors' operating income because of higher profit margins, Tenth and Blake President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Cardella told the newspaper. MillerCoors has a brewery in Trenton, Ohio.

The Community Press & Recorder has a story about MadTree Brewing Co., a new production brewery opening in the Cincinnati suburb of Columbia Township. The newspaper says MadTree will start with three year-round beers – an amber, a dark brown and an India pale ale.

The article also mentions that MadTree will can its beers. To read the full story, click here.

The third annual Dayton Beer Week -- a weeklong celebration featuring beer tastings and other beer-related events -- starts Saturday. The full rundown of events can be found by clicking here.

The week culminates Aug. 25 with the 14th annual AleFest Dayton, which features more than 350 craft beers and 160 breweries. The event is from 2 to 5 p.m. at Carillon Historical Park. Tickets are $35 in advance and $40 at the gate. Admission includes 20 samples, live entertainment, sampling glass and event guide.

Ohio is on the verge of having another combined winery-brewery. Merry Family Winery in Bidwell in southern Ohio is launching a nanobrewery this year under the name Old Mill Craft Beer.

“We feel like a craft brewery will really offer something new for the tourists who come to our winery,” co-owner Lisa Merry said. “We do get a lot of requests for beer from our customers. We thought we would give it a try. It’s something we already do as a hobby.”

Samuel Adams Brewery is releasing a new small batch brew this fall called Fat Jack, a double pumpkin ale. More than 28 pounds of real pumpkin were used in each barrel. It also includes pumpkin pie spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice.

"At 8.5 percent alcohol by volume, Samuel Adams Fat Jack finishes smooth with lingering, subtle heat from its strength and spices," the brewery said in a news release.

The owners of Vintage Estate Wine & Beer -- one of the best beer stores in Ohio -- are opening a new restaurant in Boardman. Phill and Sandy Reda will open Magic Tree Pub & Eatery this fall in a building that once housed the Youngstown Sports Grille.

The new location will feature a menu with a variety of craft and domestic beers, wine and spirits. Magic Tree also will have more than 20 televisions placed throughout the restaurant and bar for sports fans.

-- Dayton Daily News staff writer Mark Fisher writes about movie theaters that are starting to serve alcohol, including craft beer, to boost ticket sales. “While most of our customers are driven by the type of film, we have had a few mention to us that they will be coming here from now on because of the alcohol option,” Rave Dayton South General Manager Jeff Klaene told the newspaper. “It certainly cannot hurt to offer guests as many choices as we can to keep them coming to the movies versus all of the other entertainment options out there.” To read the full story, click here.

Brian Benchek is co-owner and brewer at The BottleHouse Brewery in Cleveland Heights. Benchek is a former glass blower who left the art world to start the brewery with Dave Schubert. They renoved a 6,000-square-foot warehouse into their brewery and neighborhood bar. The original plan was to open a brew-on-premise business, but Benchek has said they're so busy brewing their own beers that they haven't had the capacity to open up the brew-on-premise side of the business.

Brews Cafe in Granville will hold a humdinger of a beer tasting from 5 to 9 p.m. Aug. 18 for anybody interested in Ohio's growing craft beer industry.

The beer lineup is a who's who of new breweries in the state: Blank Slate from Cincinnati, Dayton Beer from Dayton, Four String from Columbus, Buckeye Lake from Buckeye Lake, Spruce Campbells from Columbus and Zauber from Columbus. The tasting also will feature Ohio from Akron, Main Street from Garrettsville, Jackie O's from Athens and Rust Belt from Youngstown.

Jackie O's Pub & Brewery in Athens -- considered one of the best breweries in the world by Ratebeer.com -- will hold its next bottle release event Aug. 18. The following beers will be available: Funky South Paw, Dynamo Hum, Bourbon Barrel 1/2 Sharkalligator 1/2 Man, and Cherryman.

People can obtain a ticket (which determines your place in line) starting at 5 p.m. Aug. 17 at the brewpub.

The BottleHouse Brewery in Cleveland Heights planned to be a brew-on-premise operation when it first opened earlier this year – along with producing its own beers and serving as a neighborhood bar. But that plan has changed.

The brewery is so busy keeping up with demand for its own beers – it’s had as many as 10 BottleHouse beers on tap at any given time -- that it hasn’t had the capacity to allow customers to come in and brew their own. That’s a positive problem to have so the brew-on-premise aspect of the business is on hold, co-owner Brian Benchek said.

The Akron Beacon Journal/Ohio.com has updated its printable map of Ohio breweries -- finally. The map features breweries currently operating in the state. It does not include breweries still under construction or in the planning stages. The map will be updated as breweries open, or close.

You can find the map by clicking here. It's also fixed on the beer blog just under the Ohio Breweries logo. If you find any mistakes, please email me at rarmon@thebeaconjournal.com and we'll correct them.

Fat Head's Head Hunter India Pale Ale won the 15th annual West Coast IPA Festival last weekend at The Bistro in Hayward, Calif. It was the second time that the decorated beer has won the event, which featured 61 India pale ales.

"It's kind of cool that we have a Midwest brewery winning a West Coast event," brewer Matt Cole said. "The brewers come out in full force and this is about bragging rights."

Whit Hesser, Blake Horsburgh and Bobby Slattery finally have an official name for their new Cincinnati brewery: Fifty West Brewing Co. The friends also launched the official Fifty West website, but there's not much there right now other than the company logo, email address and the words "coming soon..." The website also features a background photo that doesn't exactly scream Cincinnati (check it out by clicking here), but Hesser says it captures the spirit of the brewery.

Craft beer sales continue to skyrocket. The Brewers Association, the Boulder, Colo.-based trade group, reported this week that dollar sales climbed 14 percent in the first half of this year and the volume of craft beer sold jumped 12 percent.

The association estimated that craft brewers sold 6 million barrels over that time and now employ 104,000 full-time and part-time workers.

The Cincinnati Award Program is honoring Rivertown Brewing Co. with a 2012 Best of Cincinnati Award in the Wholesale Beer & Ale category.

The program identifies companies that have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. "These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community," the program said in a release. "These exceptional companies help make the Cincinnati area a great place to live, work and play."

High school teachers Chris Jennings, Paula Hardy, Matt Aemi and Jennifer Huhn wanted to pick an interesting topic for their journalism project as part of the recent American Society of Newspaper Editors 2012 Reynolds High School Journalism Institute at Kent State University. They chose beer.

Their project includes stories and videos about homebrewing and the brewing scene in Northeast Ohio. They also break some news about Thirsty Dog Brewing Co. and Kent State University partnering to offer a brewing course. You can check out the project by clicking here.

I spent last week vacationing in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and had no computer access. So there's plenty of beer news that I'm still catching up on. Here's some of it:

-- A famous Cincinnati-area beer brand is making a comeback. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that beer journalist Jon Newberry and his wife Betsy have created the Geo. Wiedemann Brewing Co. and are in the process of acquiring the trademark to the Wiedemann name. “As soon as I figured out that there was an opportunity to bring back Wiedemann, I thought, ‘I’ll be kicking myself until the day I die if I didn’t jump on it and do it.’ So here we are,” Newberry told the newspaper. To read the full story, click here.

Jon Albrecht is the beer buyer for the Akron-based grocery chain Acme Fresh Market. The stores stock a substantial amount of craft beer and many offer draft beer, as well. Since taking over the job, he has focused on reaching out to customers through social media to find out which beers they'd like to see in the stores.

The Plain Dealer's Marc Bona and I sat down last month to taste 31 different beer brands for a joint project. Only that one awful, awful beer — and more on that later — got tossed down the drain. I expected more to experience a similar fate.

See, these weren’t flavorful craft beers. No India pale ales or stouts. Not even a nut brown. No, these were brews with names like Old Milwaukee, Natural Light, Genesee Cream Ale and Big Flats — brands that are often referred to as fizzy yellow beer and would never pass through the lips of craft beer snobs.

Rick Armon and I had wanted to take a look at what we deemed “budget beers” for quite some time. “Budget” being a euphemism for “cheap,” of course.

If budget beer were in school, it would be a “C.” Sure, craft beers are the star students, and they get all the As and the good-looking girls, but you have to have some balance. And that’s where budget beers come in.

Beer lovers in Northeast Ohio are fortunate to have a variety of great offerings of craft beers. Draw a line from Grand Rapids, Mich., to Philadelphia, and look at all the breweries in that area. Great quality, with distribution in Northeast Ohio. And right in the middle of that line is Cleveland and Akron, home to several award-winning brewers.